Aftermath
by ellam
Summary: Post-FO2, JS. There’s a post-it note on the dashboard, a hospital name scrawled in Sharpie and a room number added later in pencil.


His wife doesn't even flinch when he heads out the door after a few hours of sleep. She's in the bathroom brushing her teeth and gives him a wave and a sad smile.  
  
"Can you pick up the dry cleaning, Jack?" Her voice catches him off guard, his hand is already on the doorknob. "I have a meeting in an hour and I've got to take Hannah to her dance class straight after."  
  
He nods, his turn to react silently - he doesn't trust that his voice won't give away his real feelings. _Dry cleaning, pick up the dry cleaning_, he tries to etch the thought in his brain. _Pick up the goddamned dry cleaning, and oh - you have a good day too._  
  
Three blocks later, he descends into the subway station, dry cleaning and wife already in the back of his thoughts. He mechanically punches his ticket, filing past students and swerving around tourists on autopilot.  
  
Someone is yapping about a term paper and a coat on sale at Bloomingdale's into a cell phone. He wants to grab her by the shoulders and ask her if she heard about the FBI agent who was shot; if she's ever seen someone she loved with a bullet hole in their thigh and blood everywhere but where it should stay. The blood, the fucking bloodstains on the carpet and her hands covered in red.  
  
He doesn't take another look at her, standing to let a man on crutches sit. _How the hell is she going to get to work if she can't drive and can't walk?_ His mind is racing once again and he disembarks a stop early, preferring the motion of the streets to the stagnant noise of the train. _How the fuck is she going to come back to work after this at all? _  
  
His car, parked haphazardly along the curb, brings the events of the previous night rushing back full force (not that they'd ever really left). Files and takeout wrappers and Samantha's sweatshirt are tangled in the backseat.  
  
He waits until he's merging onto the freeway to pull the sweatshirt onto his lap, wrapping one of the sleeves around his free hand. He doesn't think she'll want it back anytime soon, and he thinks he might keep it until she does. A souvenir of his failure to save her, hidden in the back of a closet away from the eyes of his wife, witness to a marriage he failed to save.  
  
There's a post-it note on the dashboard, a hospital name scrawled in Sharpie and a room number added later in pencil. He stares at it at every chance, willing it to disappear, willing this to have all been a nightmare.   
  
At the next stoplight he crumples the paper and stuffs it into the glove compartment. The traffic surges forward again and he turns toward the hospital. He's torn between wishing it was farther away and wanting to have been there since the night before.   
  
Suddenly, there it is, he concentrates on finding a parking space to drown out the constantly repeating tape in his head of how he failed her. Turn of the engine, close the window, lock the doors; he does it all automatically.   
The hospital corridors are white - everything is blindingly white, uncomfortably sterile. Subdued sounds and a growing urge to whisper each word.  
  
The nurse barely acknowledges his presence, continuing to fill out a form while she types his request into the computer. Her fingers, he notices, find the keys without thinking.  
  
"I don't have any record of a Sam Spade, sir." His heart drops and he struggles for what he's supposed to do next. _She's gone, she can't be, she cannot be gone. She has to be here._ "Are you certain he's been –"  
  
"Samantha, I mean Samantha. Spade. Sorry, I'm used to calling her..."  
  
"If you'll please follow me, Sir."  
  
**************  
  
"Hey, sweetie." His own words surprise him even as he's stroking her arm with one hand, pushing her hair back with the other. She's alone in the room, no jackets from friends who just left to get coffee, no flowers from a concerned mother. "I hope I didn't wake you up. How're you doing?"  
  
Her eyes struggle to focus on the face in front of her, blinking away the sleep and dried tear drops of a long day and night.  
  
The steady hum of the private room reassures her that he's the only one in earshot and then come her words:  
  
"I was so scared, Jack."  
  
The breath he hadn't realized he was holding comes out painfully.   
  
"It's okay now, sweetheart, you're going to be fine." He runs his palms down her upper arms, fighting his urge to press his ear against her chest. _I need to know your heart is still beating._  
  
"Have you been home yet?" Her voice crackles over the short sentence, she closes her eyes again.  
  
"Yeah." He shifts his weight uncomfortably. "I did. Martin told me you were here and I figured I should wait to come by."  
  
"And you're okay?" Eyes still closed, her voice sounds calmer than a minute ago.  
  
"I'm fine."  
  
'Good..." A long pause, slow breathing, her eyes flutter and she tries to move her hand to grab him. Her fatigue makes the distance too much, and she looks at him with pleading eyes.  
  
"Shhh, Sam, don't move around. You've been through a lot, you should be sleeping."  
  
He watches her during the lull in conversation. Blood is still staining her fingernails, streaked along her chin; it looks so dark against her washed out flesh.  
  
"I'm going to stay awhile, Sam." He doesn't think to ask if she even wants him here. Some part of him recoils at the idea of her lying in this empty room with no one to hold her hand, no one to tell her everything's okay when she wakes up confused and in pain.  
  
She tilts her chin in what he takes to be agreement. He slides out of his jacket and places it on the back of the chair.   
  
"Please get some sleep. I'll be here when you get up."  
  
"Maria...? The girls?"   
  
"Let me worry about things. I'll take care of everything." _Whatever that turns out to be._  
  
"You're an idiot, you know?" She softens the blow with a half smile.  
  
"I nearly put out my back picking you up and this is the thanks I get?" He laughs out loud at the welcome glimpse of her personality.  
  
"You could've died." Her eyes are glistening with more tears ready to fall. "You could've been shot, and it would've been my..."  
  
He presses his lips against her cheek; gratefully breathing her in and exhaling against her skin.   
  
"I could never leave you behind."  



End file.
